Winding of yarns of high elasticity



Oct. 25, 1966 J. CLAIBORNE ETAL 3,

WINDING OF YARNS OF HIGH ELASTICITY Filed March 27, 1964 5 Sheets-Sheet 1 SPEED C'OA/TBOL I NVENTORS Jefferson 1. Claiborne,

Jbsepk E. Moore ymfi zkz s m ORNEYS 0 5, 9 6 V J. 1.. CLAIBORNE ETAL 3,281,087

WINDING OF YARNS OF HIGH ELASTICITY Filed March 27, 1964 5 SheetsSheet 2 I INVENTORS 4/2/7 67290711. 67a z'fiorize,

Jase viz P. Moore BY mflmw/m ATTORNEYS Oct. 25, 1966 J. L. CLAIBORNE ETAL 3,281,087

WINDING OF YARNS OF HIGH ELASTICITY 5 Sheets-Sheet 5 Filed March 27, 1964 INVENTORS Jefferson L C'Zaz'borzze, BY Jsepk 1P. Maare Wfiw'g, MKM

ATTORNEYS United States Patent 3,281,087 WINDING 0F YARNS OF HIGH ELASTICITY Jefferson Lyle Claiborne and Joseph R. Moore, Chattanooga, Tenn., assignors to Dixie Yarns, Inc, a corporation of Tennessee Filed Mar. 27, 1964, Ser. No. 355,188 Claims. (Cl. 242-18) This invention relates to the winding of yarns and more particularly to the winding of yarns of very high elasticity such as core spun LYCRA.

In the winding of yarns into package form as a step precedent to dyeing or other liquid treatment, the yarn is drawn onto a dye tube, mandrel or other support from a source of supply. To accomplish this, the tube or mandrel is driven and it pulls the yarn onto itself. A traverse distributes the yarn in succeeding, superimposed, generally helical courses. This operation, of necessity, imparts some tension to the yarn which, in the case of non elastic yarns or yarns of low elasticity, is unimportant or even beneficial in building a dye package of good porosity and strength characteristics. In the case of yarns of high elasticity, however, the energy of the winding tension is stored in the yarn in elastic deformation and the compression upon the convolutions is often enough to crush a die tube which, of course, is enough to ruin permeability so as to prevent the use of the package dyeing system for yarns of such great elasticity as core spun LYCRA. Furthermore, such tensions destroy the yarn itself and so cannot be tolerated.

It is an object of the present invention to overcome the foregoing difiiculties and to provide for the winding of permeable packages from yarns of exceedingly high elasticity.

Another object of the present invention is to provide apparatus which is capable of winding yarns of high elasticity under tension free conditions into packages having good dyeing or other liquid treatment characteristics and which are readily manipulatable in the mechanical sense.

According to the present invention a package of elastic yarn is prepared in two stages, the first stage being the substantially tension-free winding of a package on a core of large diameter and the second being the bodily transfer of said package to a core of much smaller diameter whereby tension in the package is further reduced after the winding has been completed.

Other objects and advantages of this invention will be apparent upon consideration of the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment thereof in conjunction with the annexed drawings wherein:

FIGURE 1 is a view in front elevation of apparatus according to the present invention for the winding of yarns of high elasticity;

FIGURE 2 is a view of the apparatus of FIG. 1 taken from the line 2-2 of FIG. 1; and

FIGURE 3 is a view in elevation of a device and method for transferring a wound yarn package from a support of large diameter to a support of small diameter.

Referring now in greater detail to FIGS. 1 and 2 of the drawings, the numeral represents a cone of core spun LYCRA yarn. LYCRA is a trademark of E. I. du Pont de Nemours and is applied to yarns made from long chain polymerization products of at least 85% of segmented polyurethane. Yarns of LYCRA may be core spun with staple length cotton and other fibers so that -a sheath of spun cotton surrounds the center continuous filament of LYCRA. Such core spun yarns have great elasticity, because the tensile recovery of LYCRA filament is about 93 to 96% .at 50% elongation. This core spun yarn from the cone 10 is led through a self-threading guide 11, between two draw-olf rollers 12 and 13, over a traverse mechanism 14 and onto a mandrel 15 driven by surface contact with the traverse 14.

It is apparent that the yarn has to be drawn upwardly from the core 10 to be put onto the mandrel 15. The physical lifting of the yarn and unwinding of the same from the cone of necessity requires enough pull to impart consider-able tension to the yarn and this tension, if permitted to remain, presents the very problem the present invention seeks to avoid. The way this is accomplished is that the yarn is drawn from the cone by the pulling or draw oif efiect of rollers 12 and 13. Roller 12 is a plastic idler having coaxial projecting stub shafts 12a at either end. These stub shafts 12a are mounted for free rotation in bearings located near the free ends of a pair of links 16. The links 16 are freely pivoted at 17 to a bracket 18 which is attached to an appropriate stationary part of the machine. The idler roller 12 by reason of the free pivoting of the links 16, is biased by gravity to move bodily in a clockwise direction as it is viewed in FIG. 2. This bias causes it to press against the roller 13 which is a driven roller keyed to the shaft 19 of an electric motor 20. As can be seen in FIG. 2, yarn passing between driven roller 13 and freely rotatable roller 12 is pinched between them and is drawn up from the cone 10 in the direction of the arrows by reason of frictional engagement with the rollers 12 and 13. Since rollers 12 and 13 are pulling the yarn off of the core 10, there is considerable stretch or elongation of the yarn between the cone 10 and the rollers 12 and 13. However, motor 20 is provided with an appropriate speed control 21 so that the shaft 19 and hence the surface of the roller 13 can be driven .at a controllable and predetermined rate of speed. This rate of speed is so selected that it will slightly exceed the take-up speed of the mandrel 15, the yarn being over fed enough so that sensitive instruments will register no tension in the yarn running between the rollers 12 and 13 and the mandrel 15. Thus the yarn wound on mandrel 15 is free of excessive energy stored in the yarn by reason of elastic deformation.

Since the roller 12 is driven by surface contact with the roller 13, rollers 12 and 13 will run at a constant peripheral speed. Furthermore, by driving the mandrel 15 from a grooved cylinder-type traverse such as 14, the take-up speed of the yarn is maintained constant throughout the winding period despite the growth of the package diameter. The traverse 14 is driven through a central shaft 22 which is mounted in bearings 23, the bearings 23 being supported on brackets 24 which are connected to a stationary part of the machine. At one end of the shaft 22 there is a sheave 25 keyed to the shaft 22 and connected by a belt 26 to a sheave 27 which is keyed to the drive shaft 28 of a motor 29. Thus the motor 29, which is of a type to run at a constant r.p.m., drives the shaft 22 at a constant r.p.m. so that the mandrel 15 is driven at a constant r.p.m.

Of course, as the yarn body builds up on the mandrel 15, some provision has to be made for the mandrel to change its spatial relation to the traverse. To this end the mandrel 15 is mounted on a link 30 which is pivoted at 31 to a bracket 32 connected to bracket 24. It can now be seen by reference to FIG. 2 that as the yarn body builds up on the mandrel 15 the arm 30 will pivot about point 31 in a clockwise direction. Contact between the outer surface of the yarn package and the mandrel 14 is maintained by gravity since the gravity bias on the mandrel 15 tends to push it into engagement with the mandrel 14. Because the traverse 14 drives the mandrel 15 by surface contact, the surface speed, which is the yarn take-up speed, is maintained constant throughout the winding period.

When the yarn body has been wound onto the mandrel 15 as previously described, there is still so much tension on the inner convolutions of yarn that permeability is adversely affected. However, the contact of the inner coils of yarn with the mandrel 15 is sufficiently free so that the yarn body may be pushed off the mandrel. In FIG. 3 there is illustrated a way in. which the wound yarn body is transferred from the mandrel 15 to a perforated dye tube 33. To this end the dye tube 33 is loosely placed in a socket 34 inthe top of a table 35. A frusto-conical guide 36 is placed in inverted position with its apex end flush with the upper end of the dye tube 33. To center the member'36, it is provided with a boss 37 at its apex end, the boss being of a diameter to be received internally in the dye tube 33. At the base end the member 36 (the upper end of the inverted frustrum of a cone) there is provided a dowel 38 which will enter a coaxial socket in the end of the mandrel 15 to hold the same coaxial and flush with the base end of the member 36.

With the members 15, 36 and 33 vertically stacked as shown in FIG. 3, the yarn body is moved, as a whole, downwardly through the path depicted by the arrows in FIG. 3. As it moves through this path the interior core of the yarn package gradually contracts and tension is relieved as the yarn finally slips onto the perforate tube 33 and assumes the broken line position depicted in FIG. 3. As the yarn body is moved as a whole through the path depicted by the arrows in FIG. 3, the diameter of its hollow interior is gradually reduced by a divisor of about 3.

Thus, in the preparation of high elasticity yarn bodies for liquid treatments and the like, this invention provides a quick and inexpensive but effective system of preventing the storage-of large energies in elastic deformation. The yarn is overfed while being wound on a large diameter support and is then transferred to a smalltdiameter support while continuously maintaining contact with the shrinking inner convolutions of the package.

What is claimed is: 1. The method of preparing a permeable package with a right cylindrical hollow core from a yarn of very high elasticity that comprises delivering yarn to be wound,

cross winding the delivered yarn into a package having a hollow cylindrical interior under low tension conditions and, after completion of the package, substantially reducing the diameter of its hollow interior by moving the 1 package axially along a tapered member maintaining uninterrupted support for the inner convolutions of the yarn of the body, the magnitude of the axial movement along the tapered member being substantially greater than the length of said package.

2. The method of preparing a permeable package from a yarn of very high elasticity that comprises delivering yarn to be wound, cross winding the delivered yarn into a package having a hollow cylindrical interior at a rate slower than the rate of delivery of the yarn, and, after completion of the package, gradually reducing the diameter of its hollow interior while maintaining uninterrupted support for the inner convolutions of the yarn of the body until achieving a hollow right cylindrical interior reduced by a divisor of about 3.

3. The method of preparing a permeable package from a yarn of very high elasticity that comprises delivering yarn to be wound, cross winding the delivered y-arn into a hollow cylindrical package at a rate slower than the rate of delivery of the yarn, and, after completion of the package, continuously supporting the interior convolutions of the yarn package while reducing the diameter of the hollow interior of the yarn package along successive increments of its length beginning at one end and progressing to the other, and finally arresting the progressive reduction at a predetermined diameter to cause the hollow interior to assume a right cylindrical shape, said predetermined diameter being less than that of said package just after completion of the winding thereof.

4. The method of preparing a permeable package from a yarn of very high elasticity that comprises delivering yarn to be wound, cross winding the delivered yarn into a hollow cylindrical package at a rate slower than the rate of delivery of the yarn, and, after completion of the package, continuously supporting the interior convolutions of the yarn package while reducing the diameter of the hollow interior of the yarn package along successive increments of its length beginning at one end and progressing to the other, and finally arresting the progressive reduction at a predetermined diameter to cause -the hollow interior to assume a right cylindrical shape,

said predetermined diameter being less by a divisor of about 3 than that of said package just after completion of the winding thereof.

5. Apparatus for reducing the diameter of the hollow interior of a wound body of yarn comprising a cylindrical mandrel adapted to support a yarn body thereon, a cylindrical dye tube coaxial with but axially spaced from said mandrel, the diameter of said dye tube being smaller than that of said mandrel, a frusto-conical member connected between and coaxial with said mandrel and said dye tube, the apex end of said member having a diameter equal to that of said dye tube and provided with quick disconnectable means removably inserted in the end of said dye tube, the base end of said member having a diameter equal to that of said mandrel, said member presenting a continuous surface between its base and apex.

References Cited by the Examiner UNITED STATES PATENTS 1,967,252 7/1934 Morits 8-155 X 2,093,140 9/1937 Schieber 8-155 2,246,917 6/1941 Francis 24245 2,778,578 1/1957 Keith 24218 3,028,109 4/1962 Golub 242-18 3,116,887 1/1964 Rehm 242-18 3,141,624 7/1964 Gentle et a1. 242-18 FOREIGN PATENTS 554,762 7/ 1932 Germany.

STANLEY N. GILREATH, Primary Examiner. 

1. THE METHOD OF PREPARING A PERMEABLE PACKAGE WITH A RIGHT CYLINDRICAL HOLLOW CORE FROM A YARN OF VERY HIGH ELASTICITY THAT COMPRISES DELIVERING YARN TO WOUND, CROSS WINDING THE DELIVERED YARN INTO A PACKAGE HAVING A HOLLOW CYLINDRICAL INTERIOR UNDER LOW TENSION CONDITIONS AND, AFTER COMPLETION OF THE PACKAGE, SUBSTANTIALLY REDUCING THE DIAMETER OF ITS HOLLOW INTERIOR BY MOVING THE PACKAGE AXIALLY ALONG A TAPERED MEMBER MAINTAINING UNINTERRUPTED SUPPORT FOR THE INNER CONVOLUTIONS OF THE YARN OF THE BODY, THE MAGNITUDE OF THE AXIAL MOVEMENT ALONG THE TAPERED MEMBER BEING SUBSTANTIALLY GREATER THAN THE LENGTH OF SAID PACKAGE. 